Activists Rally To Save Internet Archive as Lawsuit Threatens Site 41
The Internet Archive is a massive endeavor -- it's an online library aiming to "provide Universal Access to All Knowledge." It has digitized millions of web pages, movies, photos, recordings, software programs, and books that might otherwise be lost to history. But it's neither un-censorable nor outside the bounds of copyright law. And now open internet supporters are wondering how to save it before it disappears.
.torrent? (Score:2)
Re:.torrent? (Score:5, Funny)
How about that massive data center the US government built near Salt Lake City a decade or so ago?
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I'm guessing they are archiving way more than the Wayback Machine... they just won't let anyone see it.
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massive data center the US government built near Salt Lake City
Please don't mess with that. They keep all my e-mail backed up for me in the event my laptop crashes.
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Perhaps, but have you ever tried to reach their customer support team? It's easily the most user-unfriendly group I've ever run into...
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Eh still better than Google
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We do, all of us, if we each download a small amount. Don't need a torrent of the whole Archive, just many smaller torrents of sections of it, then an index torrent that consists of magnet links to the smaller torrents.
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Distributed seeding would be possible on a volunteer basis. Would possibly need a custom-coded client to make that possible, but it's certainly workable. You don't have to have all the pieces to seed.
But I sure wouldn't want to be hosting the Microsoft Office ISO files and such where there's no grey area. Though I'm glad to download from there when I need to.
No damned way (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the Archive is threatened... they shot themselves in the foot!
I support the Archive and its mission, but the people running it have put their personal ideology before the mission of the Archive. They purposefully, knowingly invited this outcome because they decided they could declare copyright law invalid in time of a pandemic. And now they are using the situation they created to beg for funds because the Archive is threatened by evil publishers...
There's no good solution here. There is a high likelihood the Archive really is in existential danger here, and this isn't hyperbole, because the publishers could not have come up with a better attack against it if they thought the idea up themselves. At the same time, defending the Archive is rewarding the fucking idiots that created the mess in the first place.
Re:No damned way (Score:4, Insightful)
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Because it's fucking expensive?
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Jimmy Wales would like a moment of your time.
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The Pirate Bay method... you can't change the law by breaking it then getting sued. It's a bit more difficult than that. You've got to get the general public to think about the issue. For a lot of people, thinking is hard. It's easier for people to pay $10/mo to Spotify, $12/mo to Netflix, $14/mo to Apple, and then $20 every time Thriller and Abbey Road and Star Wars get re-released... at least for now.
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And it's a shame because The Wayback Machine is actually a useful resource for plenty of different applications. I also remember getting free educational films from the 50s/60s to use as sort of "stock footage" for a video collage. These are things you really can't get anywhere else. Thrown away so people can read the latest paperback? Yeah, I admit I was filled with the urge to read some of "the classics" I've skipped when the virus came, like 100+ year old capital Literature. Luckily I was able to spend s
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They purposefully, knowingly invited this outcome because they decided they could declare copyright law invalid in time of a pandemic.
Google decided the same thing without a pandemic; I don't see them struggling.
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Google has licensing deals with the publishers.
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Ah, yes, the "let us do what we want, or we'll delist you. Also we have much more money than you to fritter away on defending any lawsuit until the end of time" deal.
Many copyrighted works don't need to be archived (Score:3)
Re:No damned way (Score:5, Informative)
It's a much finer line than that.
First off, the IA didn't make the books freely available - they were DRMed and could be borrowed on a 2 week basis, 1 for 1. 1 person could borrow a book that the IA had physically available.
At the end of the two weeks, the DRM locks the book out and the IA can lend it to someone else.
For those wanting to borrow a book that was out, they could join a virtual lineup and reserve it for the next period.
All the IA did was eliminate the lineup and let everyone who wanted to borrow the book do so for 2 weeks, during the time the libraries were closed. That's it.
During the time when libraries are closed and patrons couldn't borrow a book, the IA let them borrow the same book. What you might not know and why the IA could get away with it was the IA is classified as a library.
Now, it is potential copyright infringement, because the IA let more people read a book than they had a physical copy for. Chances are, if the IA worked with other libraries to figure out how many physical books were in those libraries and limited it that way, they would be in the free and clear, but libraries being closed, well, it's a little hard to ask how many of each book does each library have in their stackc. Because with the libraries closed, people couldn't obviously borrow those books.
Technically speaking, the IA could go through their logs of the service and figure out how many copies they lent out and see how many copies of the same books are in the various libraries that were closed and pay the fines for those that were excessively lent out.
The important points are that the IA was a library, those books they "made free" were not free for all, but still loaned out for 2 weeks. They just didn't limit how many people could borrow it based on how many they had in their stacks, figuring there would be enough physical copies in closed libraries around the nation that would cover it
The IA did this because well, during lockdown you couldn't get books. Libraries were closed, and many stores were also shut so you couldn't buy them. Amazon? Forget it - they were projecting shipment dates a month out for "non essential" items.
Chances are, the suits will go ahead, but may not be for any damages so as usual, the lawyers win out. There were no book giveaways, they still were DRMed and loaned. Publishers were right in that more copies were loaned out than what the IA had in physical inventory, though given the library lockdown, the IA might not have lent out more copies than were physically in libraries to begin with.
Publishers also have to tread a very fine line here because they don't want to be seen as too greedy, lest instead of worrying about libraries like the IA lending out books during a humanitarian crisis and worry more for people who see it as a free for all to screw them over by making books free.
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Outstanding post, very informative. Thanks.
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Can you explain their hosting of complete MAME rom sets? Literally tens of thousands of games, most still in active ownership, use and copyright, distributed from their website to anyone who clicks?
IA went far, far beyond their remit of "preserving" things long ago, and just because you're allowed to preserve does not mean you can just copy and distribute arbitrarily (otherwise museums and libraries would basically be giant photocopying places). They also far outstepped the boundary of what was necessary
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I’m aware of and fully support the Archive’s digital lending initiative. It makes sense and conforms to the spirit (if not the letter) of copyright, and is a reasonable extension of already established rights for time shifting (one cannot time shift without necessarily doing some form of format shifting). The part where this falls apart is:
All the IA did was eliminate the lineup
“All?” Seriously? To put it another, less self serving way, “all they did was make unlimited copies because they decided it was ok.”
Technically speaking, the IA could go through their logs of the service and figure out how many copies they lent out and see how many copies of the same books are in the various libraries
Y
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HAS TO BE SAVED!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, this is the history of the modern world... you can't delete it!
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You can’t stop the signal, man!
By saved you mean scraped, right (Score:1)
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No, by "saved", I think we all feel like they should clone the data onto servers owned by shell companies and located in countries that have no respect for U.S. intellectual property laws.
If they really want to win the irony-of-the-century award and make people's heads explode, they should put one in China, so that the news story headline will read "China Saves History of the Internet From U.S. Censorship". :-D
They have something invaluable on their hands (Score:1)
hope it survives (Score:3)
I use it all the time. I love the old time radio shows that is on it. It can be fun listening to them and even the commercials. The commercials from selling blue coal to how good cigarette smoking is for you can be a fun lesson on how society has changed. Those shows are legally in the public domain since rights have expired.
There's so much history on the internet archive that it should be a crime to even consider shutting it down through lawsuits.
Archive the Archive! (Score:2)
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Their model is very much host now and respond to DMCA take-downs later. Since it's mostly user contributed they can probably have a decent go at arguing for protection under DMCA in court.
HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley (Score:2)
You have a say here. Don't buy books from HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley.
Whether any company is right or wrong, their lack of communication and direct jump to a lawsuit says they're not INTERESTED in working things out. They want the law changed in their behalf.
F them.
E
Creators? Creators? Anybody? Bueller? (Score:2)
Every time this topic comes up on slashdot, there is a huge run of comments about the "huge, evil publishing corporations" and never a single word about the actual creators. The straw-man depiction of publishing houses is a distortion and it immediately falsifies the rest of the arguments posted here.
What about the f***ing authors? Most authors have to write on the side, in addition to their day jobs, because authoring even well-regarded works pays only marginally and there are no 'benefits' at all. If the